No. 67.] SATURDAY,
AUGUST 4, 1860 [PRICE 2d.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
———•———
PART THE SECOND. HARTRIGHT'S NARRATIVE.
XII.
It
was between nine and ten o’clock before I reached Fulham, and found my way
to Gower’s Walk.
Both Laura and Marian came to the door to let me in. I
think we had hardly known how close the tie was which bound us three
together, until the evening came which united us again. We met as if we had
been parted for months, instead of for a few days only. Marian’s face was
sadly worn and anxious. I saw who had known all the danger, and borne all
the trouble in my absence, the moment I looked at her. Laura’s brighter
looks and better spirits told me how carefully she had been spared all
knowledge of the dreadful death at Welmingham, and of the true reason for
our change of abode.
The stir of the removal seemed to have cheered and
interested her. She only spoke of it as a happy thought of Marian’s to
surprise me, on my return, with a change from the close, noisy street, to
the pleasant neighbourhood of trees and fields and the river. She was full
of projects for the future—of the drawings she was to finish; of the
purchasers I had found in the country, who were to buy them; of the
shillings and sixpences she had saved, till her purse was so heavy that she
proudly asked me to weigh it in my own hand. The change for the better which
had been wrought in her, during the few days of my absence, was a surprise
to me for which I was quite unprepared—and for all the unspeakable happiness
of seeing it I was indebted to Marian’s courage and to Marian’s love.
When Laura had left us, and when we could speak to one
another without restraint, I tried to give some expression to the gratitude
and the admiration which filled my heart. But the generous creature would
not wait to hear me. That sublime self-forgetfulness of women, which yields
so much and asks so little, turned all her thoughts from herself to me, and
made her first interest the interest of knowing what I had felt, on
receiving her note that morning, and what difficulties I might have
encountered in hastening my return to London.
“I had only a moment left before post-time,” she said,
“or I should have written less abruptly. You look worn and weary, Walter—I
am afraid my letter must have seriously alarmed you?”
“Only at first,” I replied. “My mind was quieted,
Marian, by my trust in you. Was I right in attributing this sudden change of
place to some threatened annoyance on the part of Count Fosco?”
“Perfectly right,” she said. “I saw him yesterday; and,
worse than that, Walter—I spoke to him.”
“Spoke to him? Did he know where we lived? Did he come
to the house?”
“He did. To the house—but not up-stairs. Laura never
saw him; Laura suspects nothing. I will tell you how it happened: the
danger, I believe and hope, is over now. Yesterday, I was in the
sitting-room, at our old lodgings. Laura was drawing at the table; and I was
walking about and setting things to rights. I passed the window, and, as I
passed it, looked out into the street. There, on the opposite side of the
way, I saw the Count, with a man talking to him——”
“Did he notice you at the window?”
“No—at least, I thought not. I was too violently
startled to be quite sure.”
“Who was the other man? A stranger?”
“Not a stranger, Walter. As soon as I could draw my
breath again, I recognised him. He was the owner of the Lunatic Asylum.”
“Was the Count pointing out the house to him?”
“No; they were talking together as if they had
accidentally met in the street. I remained at the window looking at them
from behind the curtain. If I had turned round, and if Laura had seen my
face at that moment——Thank God, she was absorbed over her drawing! They soon
parted. The man from the Asylum went one way, and the Count the other. I
began to hope they were in the street by chance, till I saw the Count come
back, stop opposite to us again, take out his card-case and pencil, write
something, and then cross the road to the shop below us. I ran past Laura
before she could see me, and said I had forgotten something up-stairs. As
soon as I was out of the room, I went down to the first landing, and
waited—I was determined to stop him if he tried to come up-stairs. He made
no such attempt. The girl from the shop came through the door into the
passage, with his card in her hand—a large gilt card, with his name, and a
coronet above it, and these lines underneath in pencil: ‘Dear lady’ (yes!
the villain could address me in that way still)—’dear lady, one word, I
implore you, on a matter serious to us both.’ If one can think at all, in
serious difficulties, one thinks quick. I felt directly that it might be a
fatal mistake to leave myself and to leave you in the dark, where such a man
as the Count was concerned. I felt that the doubt of what he might do, in
your absence, would be ten times more trying to me if I declined to see him
than if I consented. ‘Ask the gentleman to wait in the shop,’ I said. ‘I
will be with him in a moment.’ I ran up-stairs for my bonnet, being
determined not to let him speak to me in-doors. I knew his deep ringing
voice; and I was afraid Laura might hear it, even in the shop. In less than
a minute I was down again in the passage, and had opened the door into the
street. He came round to meet me from the shop. There he was, in deep
mourning, with his smooth bow and his deadly smile, and some idle boys and
women near him, staring at his great size, his fine black clothes, and his
large cane with the gold knob to it. All the horrible time at Blackwater
came back to me the moment I set eyes on him. All the old loathing crept and
crawled through me, when he took off his hat with a flourish, and spoke to
me, as if we had parted on the friendliest terms hardly a day since.”
“You remember what he said?”
“I can’t repeat it, Walter. You shall know directly
what he said about you—but I can’t
repeat what he said to me. It was
worse than the polite insolence of his letter. My hands tingled to strike
him, as if I had been a man! I only kept them quiet by tearing his card to
pieces under my shawl. Without saying a word on my side, I walked away from
the house (for fear of Laura seeing us); and he followed, protesting softly
all the way. In the first by-street, I turned, and asked him what he wanted
with me. He wanted two things. First, if I had no objection, to express his
sentiments. I declined to hear them. Secondly, to repeat the warning in his
letter. I asked, what occasion there was for repeating it. He bowed and
smiled, and said he would explain. The explanation exactly confirmed the
fears I expressed before you left us. I told you, if you remember, that Sir
Percival would be too headstrong to take his friend’s advice where you were
concerned; and that there was no danger to be dreaded from the Count till
his own interests were threatened, and he was roused into acting for
himself?”
“I recollect, Marian.”
“Well; so it has really turned out. The Count offered
his advice; but it was refused. Sir Percival would only take counsel of his
own violence, his own obstinacy, and his own hatred of
you. The Count let him have his way; first privately ascertaining,
in case of his own interests being threatened next, where we lived. You were
followed, Walter, on returning here, after your first journey to
Hampshire—by the lawyer’s men for some distance from the railway, and by the
Count himself to the door of the house. How he contrived to escape being
seen by you, he did not tell me; but he found us out on that occasion, and
in that way. Having made the discovery, he took no advantage of it till the
news reached him of Sir Percival’s death—and then, as I told you, he acted
for himself, because he believed you would next proceed against the dead
man’s partner in the conspiracy. He at once made his arrangements to meet
the owner of the Asylum in London, and to take him to the place where his
runaway patient was hidden; believing that the results, whichever way they
ended, would be to involve you in interminable legal disputes and
difficulties, and to tie your hands for all purposes of offence, so far as
he was concerned. That was his purpose, on his own confession to me. The
only consideration which made him hesitate, at the last moment——”
“Yes?”
“It is hard to acknowledge it, Walter—and yet I must!
I was
the only consideration. No words can say how degraded I feel in my own
estimation when I think of it—but the one weak point in that man’s iron
character is the horrible admiration he feels for
me. I have tried, for the sake of
my own self-respect, to disbelieve it as long as I could; but his looks, his
actions, force on me the shameful conviction of the truth. The eyes of that
monster of wickedness moistened while he was speaking to me—they did,
Walter! He declared, that at the moment of pointing out the house to the
doctor, he thought of my misery if I was separated from Laura, of my
responsibility if I was called on to answer for effecting her escape—and he
risked the worst that you could do to him, the second time, for
my sake. All he asked was that I
would remember the sacrifice, and restrain your rashness, in my own
interests—interests which he might never be able to consult again. I made no
such bargain with him; I would have died first. But believe him, or
not—whether it is true or false that he sent the doctor away with an
excuse—one thing is certain, I saw the man leave him, without so much as a
glance at our window, or even at our side of the way.”
“I believe it, Marian. The best men are not consistent
in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil? At the same time, I
suspect him of merely attempting to frighten you, by threatening what he
cannot really do. I doubt his power of annoying us, by means of the owner of
the Asylum, now that Sir Percival is dead, and Mrs. Catherick is free from
all control. But let me hear more. What did the Count say of me?”
“He spoke last of you. His eyes brightened and
hardened, and his manner changed to what I remember it, in past times—to
that mixture of pitiless resolution and mountebank mockery which makes it so
impossible to fathom him. ‘Warn Mr. Hartright!’ he said, in his loftiest
manner. ‘He has a man of brains to deal with, a man who snaps his big
fingers at the laws and conventions of society, when he measures himself
with me. If my lamented friend
had taken my advice, the business of the Inquest would have been with the
body of Mr. Hartright. But my lamented friend was obstinate. See! I mourn
his loss—inwardly in my soul; outwardly on my hat. This trivial crape
expresses sensibilities which I summon Mr. Hartright to respect. They may be
transformed to immeasurable enmities, if he ventures to disturb them! Let
him be content with what he has got—with what I leave unmolested, for your
sake, to him and to you. Say to him (with my compliments), if he stirs me,
he has Fosco to deal with. In the English of the Popular Tongue, I inform
him—Fosco sticks at nothing! Dear lady, good morning.’ His cold grey eyes
settled on my face—he took off his hat solemnly—bowed, bareheaded—and left
me.”
“Without returning? without saying more last words?”
“He turned at the corner of the street, and waved his
hand, and then struck it theatrically on his breast. I lost sight of him,
after that. He disappeared in the opposite direction to our house; and I ran
back to Laura. Before I was in-doors again, I had made up my mind that we
must go. The house (especially in your absence) was a place of danger
instead of a place of safety, now that the Count had discovered it. If I
could have felt certain of your return, I should have risked waiting till
you came back. But I was certain of nothing, and I acted at once on my own
impulse. You had spoken, before leaving us, of moving into a quieter
neighbourhood and purer air, for the sake of Laura’s health. I had only to
remind her of that, and to suggest surprising you and saving you trouble by
managing the move in your absence, to make her quite as anxious for the
change as I was. She helped me to pack up your things—and she has arranged
them all for you in your new working-room here.”
“What made you think of coming to this place?”
“My ignorance of other localities in the neighbourhood
of London. I felt the necessity of getting as far away as possible from our
old lodgings; and I knew something of Fulham because I had once been at
school there. I despatched a messenger with a note, on the chance that the
school might still be in existence. It was in existence: the daughters of my
old mistress were carrying it on for her; and they engaged this place from
the instructions I had sent. It was just post-time when the messenger
returned to me with the address of the house. We moved after dark—we came
here quite unobserved. Have I done right, Walter? Have I justified your
trust in me?”
I answered her warmly and gratefully, as I really felt.
But the anxious look still remained on her face while I was speaking; and
the first question she asked, when I had done, related to Count Fosco. I saw
that she was thinking of him now with a changed mind. No fresh outbreak of
anger against him, no new appeal to me to hasten the day of reckoning,
escaped her. Her conviction that the man’s hateful admiration of herself was
really sincere, seemed to have increased a hundredfold her distrust of his
unfathomable cunning, her inborn dread of the wicked energy and vigilance of
all his faculties. Her voice fell low, her manner was hesitating, her eyes
searched into mine with an eager fear, when she asked me what I thought of
his message, and what I meant to do next, after hear ing it.
“Not many weeks have passed, Marian,” I answered,
“since my interview with Mr. Kyrle. When he and I parted, the last words I
said to him about Laura were these: ‘Her uncle’s house shall open to receive
her, in the presence of every soul who followed the false funeral to the
grave; the lie that records her death shall be publicly erased from the
tombstone by the authority of the head of the family; and the two men who
have wronged her shall answer for their crime to
me, though the justice that
sits in tribunals is powerless to pursue them.’ One of those men is beyond
mortal reach. The other remains—and my resolution remains.”
Her eyes lit up; her colour rose. She said nothing; but
I saw all her sympathies gathering to mine, in her face.
“I don’t disguise from myself, or from you,” I went on,
“that the prospect before us is more than doubtful. The risks we have run
already are, it may be, trifles, compared with the risks that threaten us in
the future—but the venture shall be tried, Marian, for all that. I am not
rash enough to measure myself against such a man as the Count before I am
well prepared for him. I have learnt patience; I can wait my time. Let him
believe that his message has produced its effect; let him know nothing of
us, and hear nothing of us; let us give him full time to feel secure—his own
boastful nature, unless I seriously mistake him, will hasten that result.
This is one reason for waiting; but there is another, more important still.
My position, Marian, towards you and towards Laura, ought to be a stronger
one than it is now, before I try our last chance.”
She leaned near to me, with a look of surprise.
“How can it be stronger?” she asked.
“I will tell you,” I replied, “when the time comes. It
has not come yet: it may never come at all. I may be silent about it to
Laura for ever—I must be silent, now, even to
you, till I see for myself that I
may harmlessly and honourably speak. Let us leave that subject. There is
another which has more pressing claims on our attention. You have kept
Laura, mercifully kept her, in ignorance of her husband’s death——”
“Oh, Walter, surely it must be long yet, before we tell
her of it?”
“No, Marian. Better that you should reveal it to her
now, than that accident, which no one can guard against, should reveal it to
her at some future time. Spare her all the details—break it to her very
tenderly—but tell her that he is dead.”
“You have a reason, Walter, for wishing her to know of
her husband’s death, besides the reason you have just mentioned?”
“I have.”
“A reason connected with that subject which must not be
mentioned between us yet?—which may never be mentioned to Laura at all?”
She dwelt on the last words, meaningly. When I answered
her, in the affirmative, I dwelt on them too.
Her face grew pale. For a while, she looked at me with
a sad, hesitating interest. An unaccustomed tenderness trembled in her dark
eyes and softened her firm lips, as she glanced aside at the empty chair in
which the dear companion of all our joys and sorrows had been sitting.
“I think I understand,” she said. “I think I owe it to
her and to you, Walter, to tell her of her husband’s death.”
She sighed, and held my hand fast for a moment—then
dropped it abruptly, and left the room. On the next day, Laura knew that his
death had released her, and that the error and the calamity of her life lay
buried in his tomb.
His name was mentioned among us no more. Thenceforward,
we shrank from the slightest approach to the subject of his death; and, in
the same scrupulous manner, Marian and I avoided all further reference to
that other subject, which, by her consent and mine, was not to be mentioned
between us yet. It was not the less present to our minds—it was rather kept
alive in them by the restraint which we had imposed on ourselves. We both
watched Laura more anxiously than ever; sometimes waiting and hoping,
sometimes waiting and fearing, till the time came.
By degrees, we returned to our accustomed way of life:
it was the best, the only means in our power of helping Laura to look away
again from that past sorrow and suffering which the inevitable disclosure
had recalled to her mind. We all wanted the quiet and repose which we had
now found. I resumed the daily work, which had been suspended during my
absence in Hampshire. Our new lodgings cost us more than the smaller and
less convenient rooms which we had left; and the claim thus implied on my
increased exertions was strengthened by the doubtfulness of our future
prospects. Emergencies might yet happen which would exhaust our little fund
at the banker’s; and the work of my hands might be, ultimately, all we had
to look to for support. More permanent and more lucrative employment than
had yet been offered to me was a necessity of our position—a necessity for
which I now diligently set myself to provide.
It must not be supposed that the interval of rest and
seclusion of which I am now writing, entirely suspended, on my part, all
pursuit of the one absorbing purpose with which my thoughts and actions are
associated in these pages. That purpose was, for months and months yet,
never to relax its claims on me. The slow ripening of it still left me a
measure of precaution to take, an obligation of gratitude to perform, and a
doubtful question to solve.
The measure of precaution related, necessarily, to the
Count. It was of the last importance to ascertain, if possible, whether his
plans committed him to remaining in England—or, in other words, to remaining
within my reach. I contrived to set this doubt at rest by very simple means.
His address in St. John’s Wood being known to me, I inquired in the
neighbourhood; and having found out the agent who had the disposal of the
furnished house in which he lived, I asked if number five, Forest Road, was
likely to be let within a reasonable time. The reply was in the negative. I
was informed that the foreign gentleman then residing in the house had
renewed his term of occupation for another six months, and would remain in
possession until the end of June in the following year. We were then at the
beginning of December only. I left the agent with my mind relieved from all
present fear of the Count’s escaping me.
The obligation I had to perform, took me once more into
the presence of Mrs. Clements. I had promised to return, and to confide to
her those particulars relating to the death and burial of Anne Catherick,
which I had been obliged to withhold at our first interview. Changed as
circumstances now were, there was no hindrance to my trusting the good woman
with as much of the story of the conspiracy as it was necessary to tell. I
had every reason that sympathy and friendly feeling could suggest to urge on
me the speedy performance of my promise—and I did conscientiously and
carefully perform it. There is no need to burden these pages with any
statement of what passed at the interview. It will be more to the purpose to
say that the interview itself necessarily brought to my mind the one
doubtful question still remaining to be solved—the question of Anne
Catherick’s parentage on the father’s side.
A multitude of small considerations in connexion with
this subject—trifling enough in themselves, but strikingly important, when
massed together—had latterly led my mind to a conclusion which I resolved to
verify. I obtained Marian’s permission to write to Major Donthorne, of
Varneck Hall (where Mrs. Catherick had lived in service for some years
previous to her marriage), to ask him certain questions. I made the
inquiries in Marian’s name, and described them as relating to matters of
personal interest in her family, which might explain and excuse my
application. When I wrote the letter, I had no certain knowledge that Major
Donthorne was still alive; I despatched it on the chance that he might be
living, and able and willing to reply.
After a lapse of two days, proof came, in the shape of
a letter, that the Major was living, and that he was ready to help us.
The idea in my mind when I wrote to him, and the nature
of my inquiries, will be easily inferred from his reply. His letter answered
my questions, by communicating these important facts:
In the first place, “the late Sir Percival Glyde, of
Blackwater Park,” had never set foot in Varneck Hall. The deceased gentleman
was a total stranger to Major Donthorne, and to all his family.
In the second place, “the late Mr. Philip Fairlie, of
Limmeridge House,” had been, in his younger days, the intimate friend and
constant guest of Major Donthorne. Having refreshed his memory by looking
back to old letters and other papers, the Major was in a position to say
positively, that Mr. Philip Fairlie was staying at Varneck Hall in the month
of August, eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that he remained there, for
the shooting, during the month of September and part of October following.
He then left, to the best of the Major’s belief, for Scotland, and did not
return to Varneck Hall till after a lapse of time, when he reappeared in the
character of a newly-married man.
Taken by itself, this statement was, perhaps, of little
positive value—but, taken in connexion with certain facts, every one of
which either Marian or I knew to be true, it suggested one plain conclusion
that was, to our minds, irresistible.
Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie had been at
Varneck Hall in the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that Mrs.
Catherick had been living there in service at the same time, we knew
also:—first, that Anne had been born in June, eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven; secondly, that she had always presented an extraordinary
personal resemblance to Laura; and, thirdly, that Laura herself was
strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie had been one of the
notoriously handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his
brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the
women—an easy, light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man; generous to a
fault; constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously thoughtless
of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were the facts we
knew; such was the character of the man. Surely, the plain inference that
follows needs no pointing out?
Read by the new light which had now broken upon me,
even Mrs. Catherick’s letter, in despite of herself, rendered its mite of
assistance towards strengthening the conclusion at which I had arrived. She
had described Mrs. Fairlie (in writing to me) as “plain-looking,” and as
having “entrapped the handsomest man in England into marrying her.” Both
assertions were gratuitously made, and both were false. Jealous dislike
(which, in such a woman as Mrs. Catherick, would express itself in petty
malice rather than not express itself at all) appeared to me to be the only
assignable cause for the peculiar insolence of her reference to Mrs. Fairlie,
under circumstances which did not necessitate any reference at all.
The mention here of Mrs. Fairlie’s name naturally
suggests one other question. Did she ever suspect whose child the little
girl brought to her at Limmeridge might be?
Marian’s testimony was positive on this point. Mrs.
Fairlie’s letter to her husband, which had been read to me in former
days—the letter describing Anne’s resemblance to Laura, and acknowledging
her affectionate interest in the little stranger—had been written, beyond
all question, in perfect innocence of heart. It even seemed doubtful, on
consideration, whether Mr. Philip Fairlie himself had been nearer than his
wife to any suspicion of the truth. The disgracefully deceitful
circumstances under which Mrs. Catherick had married, the purpose of
concealment which the marriage was intended to answer, might well keep her
silent for caution’s sake, perhaps for her own pride’s sake also—even
assuming that she had the means, in his absence, of communicating with the
father of her unborn child.
As this surmise floated through my mind, there rose on
my memory the remembrance of the Scripture denunciation which we have all
thought of, in our time, with wonder and with awe: “The sins of the fathers
shall be visited on the children.” But for the fatal resemblance between the
two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the
innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim, could never have been
planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of
circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to
the heartless injury inflicted on the child!
These thoughts came to me, and others with them, which
drew my mind away to the little Cumberland churchyard where Anne Catherick
now lay buried. I thought of the bygone days when I had met her by Mrs.
Fairlie’s grave, and met her for the last time. I thought of her poor
helpless hands beating on the tombstone, and her weary, yearning words,
murmured to the dead remains of her protectress and her friend. “Oh, if I
could die, and be hidden and at rest with
you! ” Little more than a year had
passed since she breathed that wish; and how inscrutably, how awfully, it
had been fulfilled. The words she had spoken to Laura by the shores of the
lake, the very words had now come true. “Oh, if I could only be buried with
your mother! If I could only wake at her side when the angel’s trumpet
sounds, and the graves give up their dead at the resurrection!” Through what
mortal crime and horror, through what darkest windings of the way down to
Death, the lost creature had wandered in God’s leading to the last home
that, living, she never hoped to reach! There (I said in my own
heart)—there, if ever I have the power to will it, all that is mortal of her
shall remain, and share the grave-bed with the loved friend of her
childhood, with the dear remembrance of her life.
That rest shall be sacred—that
companionship always undisturbed!
So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages as
it haunted my life, goes down into the impenetrable Gloom. Like a Shadow she
first came to me, in the loneliness of the night. Like a Shadow she passes
away, in the loneliness of the dead.
*
*
*
*
*
Forward now! Forward on the way that winds through
other scenes, and leads to brighter times.
THE END OF THE SECOND PART.
All The Year Round, 4 August 1860, Vol.III, No.67, pp.385-390
Weekly Part 37.
DOWNLOAD
pdf of this part
Harper's Weekly illustrations